My Life as a Rat. Joyce Carol Oates

were allowed to grow shabby, derelict. Particularly, Daddy grew upset if a house was allowed to go vacant, for bad things could come of vacant properties, he knew from his own boyhood with his brothers and cousins raising hell in places not properly supervised.

      Back of our house was a yard that seemed large, and deep, running into municipal-owned uncultivated acreage on the steep bank of the Niagara River. There were trees of which Daddy was proud—a tall red maple that turned fiery-red and splendid in October, an even taller oak, a row of evergreens. (But Daddy was unsentimental about cutting down the oak after it was damaged by a windstorm, and he feared it might be blown down onto the house; he’d cut it down himself with a rented chain saw.) My mother tried to cultivate beds of flowers, with varying degrees of success: wisteria, peonies, day lilies, roses assailed by Japanese beetles, slugs, black rot and mold, that often defeated her by mid-summer for Mom could not enlist her older children’s help with the property as Daddy could.

      Our house was at the dead end of Black Rock Street above the river.

      I cried a lot when I was sent away. Any river or stream I saw, even on TV or in a photograph, tears would be triggered. You have to get hold of yourself, Violet. You will make yourself sick. You can’t—just— keep—crying … My aunt Irma pleaded with me.

      The poor woman, I was not nice to her. She could not bear a broken heart in a child impossible to heal by any effort of her own.

      No matter how far away I came to live from the Niagara River, it has gotten into my dreams. For it is not like most other rivers—relatively short (thirty-six miles), and relatively narrow (at its widest, eighty-five hundred feet), and exceptionally fast-moving and turbulent. As you approach the river calls to you—whispers that become ever louder, deafening. The river is turbulent like a living thing shivering inside its skin. Miles from the thunderous falls like a nightmare that calls—Come! Come here. Strife and suffering are absolved here.

      That morning in December when you wake to see that the river has frozen all the way across, or nearly; corrugated black ice with a fine light dusting of snow over it, the eye registers as beauty.

       But I had a happy childhood in that house. No one can take that from me.

       Best Kisses!

      A GAME. A HAPPY GAME. THE WAY MOM WOULD STOOP OVER to kiss me, suddenly.

      When I was a little girl. Best kisses come by surprise!

      Lacing her (strong) fingers through my (smaller) fingers. Securing my fingers with hers. Preparing to cross a busy street. Ready. Set. Go!

      A long time ago when Mommy loved me as much as Daddy did. When I knew (without needing to be told) that Mommy would take care of me and keep me from harm even if this harm was Daddy.

      “IT’S EASY TO LOVE THEM WHEN THEY’RE LITTLE”—MOM LAUGHED, talking with a friend. “Later, not so easy.”

       Obituary

      THIS CLIPPING FROM THE SOUTH NIAGARA UNION JOURNAL I saved until it became so dry it fell into pieces in my fingers. An obituary beneath a photograph of a shyly smiling black boy with a gap between two prominent front teeth. Seventeen when he’d died but in the photo he looks as if he could be fifteen, even fourteen.

      Hadrien Johnson, 17. Resident of 29 Howard Street, South Niagara. Varsity softball and basketball at South Niagara High School. Honor roll 1, 2, 3. Youth Choir, African Methodist Episcopal Church. Died in South Niagara General Hospital, November 11, 1991, of severe head wounds following an attack in the late evening of November 2 by yet-unidentified assailants as he was bicycling to his home. Survived by his mother, Ethel, his sisters, Louise and Ida, and his brothers, Tyrone, Medrick, and Herman. Services Monday at African Methodist Episcopal Church.

      People would ask if I’d known Hadrian Johnson. (The name was misspelled in the newspaper obituary but corrected in subsequent articles.) No! I had not known him—he was a junior at the high school, I was in seventh grade. His sister Louise was a year older than me, at the middle school, but I did not know Louise either.

      There were no African American classmates I knew well. All of my friends were white like me and all of them lived within a few blocks of our house on Black Rock Street.

      It was only after his death that I came to know Hadrian Johnson. It was only after his death that we came to be associated in people’s minds. Hadrian Johnson. Violet Rue Kerrigan.

      Not that it did any good for Hadrian Johnson, who was dead. And it was the worst thing that could have happened to Violet Rue Kerrigan.

       “Boys Will Be Boys”

       W AS IT WONDERFUL TO HAVE BROTHERS WHEN YOU WERE growing up? Older brothers? Who could look out for you?

      Girls lacking older brothers would ask me. How wistful they were! Having to fend on their own.

      I didn’t just adore my brothers, I was proud of them. Just the fact—My big brothers! Mine.

      For girls are keenly sensitive of needing to be looked after. In certain circumstances, like school. Not to be alone, exposed, unprotected. Vulnerable.

      Not measurable but very real—the power of older brothers to forestall teasing, bullying, harassment, threats from other boys made against girls. The protective power of older brothers by their mere existence.

      The sexual threat of boys is greatly diminished, by the (mere) existence of a girl’s brothers.

      Unless of course the girl’s brothers are themselves the (sexual) threat.

      Parents have not a clue. Cannot guess. The (secret) lives of children, adolescents. Thinking that, because we are quiet, or docile (seeming), because we smile on cue and seem happy, because we are no trouble, that our inner lives are placid, and not churning and choppy and terrifying as the Niagara River as it gathers momentum rushing to the Falls.

       Did you adore your brothers, Vi’let?

       Sure, you had to!

      IT’S TRUE. I ADORED MY BROTHERS.

      Not so much Rick, the youngest, who resembled me temperamentally, and who was a reasonably good student, as I was, and sweet-natured, but the other, older boys—Jerr, Lionel, Les.

      They were quick-tempered and loud and impatient and bossy. Out of the earshot of adults they were profane, even obscene. They were funny—crass and crude. And loud—did I say loud? Voices, footsteps. On the stairs. Opening and shutting doors. Colliding with me if I didn’t get out of their way.

      Ignoring me, usually. Of course, why’d my brothers take note of me?

      They were not so polite to Mom, sometimes. Mouthy, she’d call them. But in our father’s presence, they were watchful, wary. They behaved.

      If Daddy became annoyed with one of them he had ways of disciplining: sometimes a sharp, level look; sometimes an uplifted hand, the flat of the hand, a fist.

      Flick of Devil-Daddy tongue which the boys could not miss. Hot red, sharp-pointed tongue like a blade slicing their hearts. But in the next instant, gone.

      Even so, outside the house the older Kerrigan boys sometimes got into trouble.

      Almost there was a hushed reverent air to the phrase—into trouble.

      The first time I was too young to know what had happened. Nor did Katie